A HEALTH hub in Basingstoke received a special visit from the town's MP.

Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke, visited the Health Hub in Festival Place during a creative arts event where theatre and creative activities supporting mental well-being were showcased.

The Health Hub in Festival Place started as a vaccination centre and now offers a wide range of health services to provide preventative healthcare across north Hampshire, including health checks, smoking cessation and weight management courses too. This helps alleviate the pressure that GP practices have been under in recent times.

READ MORE: The White Hart hotel: See inside newly refurbished rooms

Mental health theatre company Fluid Motion and Anvil Arts Musication Station showcased how the world of theatre, music and the arts can support good mental healthcare through social prescribing.

Ms Miller said: “The Festival Place Health Hub is showing how social prescribing will be central to the future work of the NHS, with mental health and wellbeing being improved through theatre, music and creative activities.

“It is important to find new effective ways to support people struggling with mental health, without always having to prescribe drugs. Social prescribing already points patients directly to creative wellbeing workshops and courses in their local community and could help many with their mental wellbeing."

Fluid Motion artistic director Leigh Johnstone added: “It’s about filling The Health Hub and the local community with art, creativity and unforgettable experiences, to give people that light bulb moment, that will nurture and support their mental health.

SEE ALSO: Three-vehicle crash on A339, Kingsclere Road

“We have a real opportunity here to be a beacon showing how the synergy between the arts and healthcare can work well together for the greater good, theatre can help everyone make sense of the world and guide us to a better place”. 

Richard Mayon-White, operations lead for the Health Hub said the vision for The Health Hub is a space for "preventative health and wellbeing initiatives in a community setting".

Hampshire County councillor Stephen Reid added: “One of the impacts of the pandemics is that people accept that they can receive healthcare, like vaccines, outside formal NHS settings. This Health Hub is an exciting new venture where the creative arts and healthcare services are coming together to deliver 'wellness' or social prescribing in a new way, in the heart of our shopping centre. I wish it every success."